There’s been a few days since we’ve all hear that Google Chrome is live but many people are asking if it’s any good and if it’s worth giving it a spin. I’m not yet a power user on Chrome but I can tell you a few things after seeing it working today for at least 4 hours. Yes, I know it’s another browser on the market and we already have a bunch of them, but it’s from Google so I obviously had to test it out.

1. Even though it doesn’t use the same Firefox engine, the simplicity and the rendering seem to be the same. Google Chrome uses WebKit for rendering, which is the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari browser.

2. I love the fact that it’s not such a big resource eater like Firefox when you have multiple tags open. I know my machine may not be the best in the world with only 512MB of RAM, but believe me Chrome manages to stay under 150MB of RAM while Firefox never goes under 250MB with as many tags open.

3. I don’t like that they have a selection/scrolling problem. It’s like Chrome is a real person. It takes some time (whenever he wants) to rest or think and doesn’t deliver as fast as the user needs it. I know it’s still some sort of a Beta, but I would have expecting something flawless from the big G.

4. For some reason Chrome loads all the sites I browse, faster. Still haven’t figured that out. Why?

Would you give it a spin? Would you download Google Chrome and give us your opinion?

What a surprise! With all that hype around Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta, Google has made an intelligent move with its new browser called Chrome.

It has been secretly developed for the past two years. Accordingly to Google engineers, Chrome was based on Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla Firefox engine. Thus, the browser’s code is open to any developer or third party.

Google Chrome has just been released, so you can give it a try. I’ve tested myself this excellent browser, and I must say it has some great features. Google used the same clean design and integrated its services in browser’s URL bar. For example if you type a text, the bar will make automatically suggestions from your web history, Google search or popular sites. Another interesting feature is the New Tab page which will show the most visited pages, the recent searches, bookmarks or closed tabs. That adds many points for functionality and usability.

Moreover the browser brings some ingenious stuff like applications shortcuts on your desktop, the incognito mode which won’t save your visited pages in browser’s history or instant bookmarks. Also the Chrome has an amazing architecture which offers protection against malware. Each tab works independently without interacting with the others. Supposingly you will visit a malware website, and a malicious program enters your browser, it won’t affect the whole structure and will be eliminated when the tab is closed.

I strongly believe that Google Chrome will make its march straight to the top in the browser’s competition. As I see it, in a short time enthusiasts will create plugins and extensions like in Mozilla’s case. Because it is faster many IE, Firefox and Opera users will switch. In addition the enhanced security makes it the safest browser, but it also can be a target from now on.

To sum up, I can say I’ve enjoyed it.

Download Google Chrome or read the comic book of Chrome.

Who’s Google? It’s the world’s most popular internet search engine, that is backed by a complex algorithm that was developed by geniuses with computers, Larry Page and Sergey Brin - the founders. They’re the leaders of search, but today the question is … for how long? Very long I think.

According to comScore’s latest figures the US search market is dominated with a stunning 61.5% by Google, then we have Yahoo with 20.9%, 9.2% for MSN, 4.3% for Ask.com and 4.1% for Aol. But where are those dot.com startups that want to revolutionize the industry? Where’s Mahalo or Cuil or Quintura? There’s probably a reason why I can’t find them on the list, right?

Google is going to stay king over search for a long time because their system is very good. Not flawless, but very good. But will they stay there forever? Probably not. Why? Microsoft and Yahoo! are always looking for some hot startups - with great ideas - to buy. Live Search from MSFT is getting better and better after they bought Powerset.

Another way of dethroning Google is to make it return bad results. I’m not talking of those people trying to spam their listings - it’s only available for a few hours/days and when found, it goes down. I’m talking about major websites asking to be removed from the search results. But who’s going to do that? Probably no one!

If Microsoft and Yahoo should learn anything from Google’s initial success, it’s that getting “rid” of users quickly is more important than keeping them searching. Sure, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it worked for Google - ArsTechinca

On June 20, Marilyn Huff a U.S. judge upheld a jury’s ruling for $368 million in damages against Microsoft Corp for violating patents held by Alcatel-Lucent. The whole amount however, is bigger, because Bill’s company has to pay a total of 512 million, which includes interest on the original award.

“We had always believed we had a strong case and are pleased that the judge agreed that the jury’s thoughtful verdict was well reasoned and supported by the evidence,” Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Mary Ward said in a statement.

Microsoft said the infringement for those two video-encoding patents (which are obviously still so relevant to the proceedings in these cases) are related to technology that allows users to enter dates into calendars and the other one is used in tablet computers to recognize patterns in handwriting. They are going to appeal the decision again.

I’m not sure what they’re based on but it’s pretty clear they may not win that battle.

Reuters

In the “it never happens to me” series, it did happen to me. Recently my laptop’s hard drives crashed/died and the data I had on it, was crucial. First thing I did was to panic and then I had to find online, a company that would help me recover everything.

After a few hours of search, I decided to leave data recovery to DTI Data. They seemed to be the most professional and the fact that they are one of the only companies to offer free upfront flat rate price quotes on single hard drive data recovery was a big plus for me. But a fair price wasn’t the only thing I had in my mind. Another reason I was lured to go with DTI Data was because of the data guarantee; don’t pay unless they recover the lost data.

DTI Data has a biometrically secure (class 100) clean rooms, is authorized by all major hard disk manufacturers and is experienced with recovering data from your laptop or PC hard drive and ca even assist you with DIY Data Recovery Software and file undelete tools. They can also do raid data recovery for larger corporations or home grown businesses. From what I’ve been told all software they have was built in house, so I guess these guys are really good.

They also maintain a data recovery blog, to publish articles with tips and tricks on how to recover data by yourself or how to preserve your data. This is where I learned that chkdsk is not a recovery tool and you shouldn’t run it, that heat plays a major role when it comes to the destructions of hard drives, memory or CPU and that dust causes poor connectivity and restricts the air flow.

The full list of services includes:

• hard drive recovery
• data recovery services
• data recovery software
• RAID data recovery
• Exchange server recovery
• SCSI hard drive data recovery
• and other specific data recovery needs.

DTI Data did a great job with my laptop hard drive so I guess this is why this article. I’m very happy that I paid a fair price and I got all my data back in a very short period of time. If you needed one more thing to convince you that these guys are good at what they do, you should know that since 1992 they had over 100,000 clients and NASA’s quote “Lockhead Martin referred us” is a very big plus.

The new contest from Microsoft to evaluate Windows Server 2008 is offering Windows Home Server as a prize and now that we mentioned it, I thought of giving some heads up on what (I’ve heard) to be the next major upgrade for WHS.

Windows Home Serve Vail is going to be the name, rumors say, and the most important thing is that it comes with more entertainment capabilities. Before Vail is coming to the market Microsoft needs to fix a data corruption bug that has been affecting third party applications.

We hope to get more info about it soon, because right now we can only speculate.

via Zdnet

Big announcement guys and gals. Microsoft is offering incentives to people that have the time to evaluate (evalu’08) the new Microsoft Server products that were recently released in Los Angeles. The prize is a Windows Home Server. But wait, this is not for all of us. Only 18+ years old residents of the United States with an IT or software development role will be allowed to sign up.

Go ahead and read the official rules and keep in mind that sweepstakes ends June 30, 2008.

via wegotserved

The web browser pioneer, Netscape Navigator was sentenced to die. AOL announced that the official support for Netscape Navigator will be stopped starting from March 1st. I remember myself when I first used the Internet. Netscape was the favorite browser back then. Although, the bad marketing and the strong competitor Internet Explorer have lowered its market share.

Nowadays, Netscape has only 0.61% of the market. When its decline was obvious, the company opened its source code, making it available for developers. So, the Mozilla project appeared and today’s popular Firefox. In spite of being acquired by AOL in 1998, Netscape remained in obscurity. It had troubles with security patches and bug fixes, so the web surfers forgot it.

If you still planing to use Netscape Navigator, you should perhaps switch to Firefox and add an extension for Netscape. For now I will just say “RIP Netscape Navigator…”

via Gearater

Texas Instruments already presented a testing platform for Android earlier this week, but the big news came in today. Apparently TI already has a development platform ready to run and is close to the stage where they ship to developers.

So, if you are a programmer and you want to help us improve the “world” (of cellphones) you may want to consider Texas Instruments’ Android development platform. It runs on OMAP 3430 CPU at 600 Mhz, has 720p video output and costs less than $1k from what I’ve heard.

via Engadget

There is so much to tell about Android, but I will be short about it. First of all, you should know that Android is an Open Handset Alliance Project started by Google Inc.

More about the Android Project are said in the video below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg[/youtube]

The Android Developer Challenge intends to encourage developers to built useful apps in the following areas of interest:

• Social networking
• Media consumption, management, editing, or sharing, e.g., photos
• Productivity and collaboration such as email, IM, calendar, etc.
• Gaming
• News and information
• Rethinking of traditional user interfaces
• Use of mash-up functionality
• Use of location-based services
• Humanitarian benefits
• Applications in service of global economic development
• Whatever you’re excited about!

The most suitable apps will receive a prize too. The Android Developer Challenge will award $10 million to developers who build great apps for Android. So, the race sounds to be very hard. The team has extended the submission deadline to 14 April 2008. The 50 most promising entries received by April 14 will be rewarded with $25,000. Furthermore the selected will then be eligible for even greater recognition via ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards.

Based on the feedback from developers, a new SDK version will be released in the next weeks. According to Android blog, the new SDK will feature UI and API enhancements. Thus, the deadline has been moved to April. Here are the scheduled activities for Android Developer Challenge:

• April 14, 2008: Deadline to submit applications for judging
• May 5, 2008: Announcement of the 50 first round winners, who will be eligible for the final round
• June 30, 2008: Deadline for the 50 winners of the first round to submit for the final round
• July 21, 2008: Announcement of the grand prize winner and runner-up

via Android’s Website